Leadership of Church Leaders as Perceived by Christians in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province

Abstract

          The objectives of this research were to 1) investigate the leadership of church leaders as perceived by Christians in Nakhon Si Thammarat, which comprised 4 aspects namely: The faith in God, financial management, team work management and in building relationships; 2) compare leaderships of the church leaders in relevance to gender, age, and number of years of being Christianity; and 3) investigate problems and suggestions about leaderships. The sample composed of 324 Christians in Nakhon Si Thammarat selected by stratified random sampling. The instruments used to collect data were a questionnaire and an interview questions with the overall reliability coefficient of .98. Statistics used in data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation, one-way analysis of variance and content analysis. The findings indicated that in overall, the Christians perceived their leadership as a high level and also each aspect.
2) The overall perception on the leadership of the Christians with different gender had no statistically significant difference but had statistically significant difference on the aspects of church leaderships and building relationships. Moreover, the perceptions of Christians with different age and number of years of being Christianity on both overall and individual aspect had no statistically significant difference. 3) Problems include the pastors do not have the qualifications to achieve the goals of the church. There is because they lack clear goals, do not focus on teaching verbal traditions, insufficient knowledge of Theology, do not act as a model in faith, sinful, inability to give advice to staff and members of the church. It is suggested that the pastor must know the role and duty that the Lord has set, be a good manager, lead an exemplary life in every aspect and maintain a good relationship with God.